In September 1870, Nasir al-Din Shah (r.1848-1896), the reigning king of the Iranian Qajar Empire, embarked on a seven-month-long journey to Ottoman Iraq. Significantly, Nasir al-Din Shah himself wrote a detailed account of his travels, which was published in Tehran shortly after his return. Ottoman Iraq in the nineteenth century was a site of Ottoman centralization, intense activity by both Qajar population and state, as well as British colonial ambitions in the Gulf region. Apart from geographical proximity, the existence of four main Shi'a shrine cities of Karbala, Najaf, Kazemeyn, and Samarra, collectively referred to as 'Atabat ('thresholds') resulted in considerable movement of people, goods and ideas between Iran and Ottoman Iraq. Situating Nasir al-Din Shah's 'Atabat travelogue in the intersect of historiography on Ottoman Iraq, Qajar historiography, and historiography of nineteenth-century Muslim travel-writing, I analyze how the travelogue itself was utilized as a method of asserting sovereignty. Through comparative analysis of the two extant versions of the travelogue, I will argue that in the 'Atabat travelogue, Ottoman Iraq is represented as a space where Ottoman and Qajar sovereignties are projected upon through both early modern and modern ways of asserting authority in a multi-layered system of competing and hierarchical sovereignties. The paper thus attempts to highlight a moment in history of the changing conception of sovereignty from a more fluid claim to authority to self-determination and supreme authority in a confined territory. I argue that at this time modern notions such as territoriality, citizenship and "scientific" modes of geographic knowledge production were utilized simultaneously in conjunction with more classical patronage and reinvention of historical heritage to claim sovereignty over Ottoman Iraq. This will serve as a window to the complex relationship between the two independent Qajar (1785-1925) and Ottoman (1453-1923) empires, where both empires had to deal with various pressures and intrusions of European colonial powers and function within an overbearing colonial discourse. Highlighting the constant tension between ideas of friendship and Muslim unity with conflicting claims to sovereignty, my attempt is to break away from the preoccupation with the West in historiography of inter-state and international relations of non-European states in the nineteenth century.